Modest little college museums? Maybe they exist somewhere, on quiet campuses across the nation, but there are also magnificent university-affiliated institutions like these. And in terms of this season’s wide-ranging exhibitions, none seem limited by geography. Georgia O’Keeffe, queen of the Southwest, is in theJeffersonian South; Andy Warhol, king ofNew York night life, is hanging in Silicon Valley; and lots of ancient Middle Eastern objects have settled in Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania

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"Ram Caught in a Thicket,” an expertly crafted artifact created in Ur ca. 2450 BCE, in the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum.CreditTom Stanley/Penn Museum

Just another busy day in Mesopotamia a few thousand years ago. Some cuneiform tablets to read. Getting out the hoe for garden work. When guests arrive, setting the appetizers tray on that adorable “Ram in the Thicket” statuette, pictured above (gold, silver, lapis lazuli and more, 2600-2400 B.C.). Even if it’s 5400 B.C., there are large clay jars holding more than two gallons of wine each. What’s all of this ancient history doing in Philadelphia? Many people don’t realize that the first American archaeological expedition to the Middle East set out from the Penn Museum in the 1880s. Its Middle East galleries reopened this spring after a $5 million renovation and are now welcoming guests for the first full academic year. They’re filled with almost 1,200 objects from settlements like Tepe Gawra and Ur, among them the items mentioned above — along with Queen Puabi’s glittery burial outfit.

In Bengal, the scroll painters are like traveling performance artists, singing and unrolling their scrolls one frame at a time. The subject could be anything from mythology to world events (including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami). Artists in the Gond community in Central India do nature paintings on mud walls and floors. The Warli also do wall paintings and almost always use the same color combination: red-brown and white. Women of the Mithila region of Bihar have been doing interior wall paintings since the 14th century. All four artistic traditions are represented here, in 47 paintings by 24 artists, among them Manisha Jha’s “The Jackfruit Tree” (2012) and Mayank Shyam’s “Origin of Life” (2011), pictured. These are mostly acrylics — so much more portable than mud floors — because as globalization has opened new markets, the “artists innovated to participate in that wider field,” Diane Mullin, a senior curator, said.

Once upon a time, when Studio 54 was New York’s hottest address, dancing with the stars was real life, with showbiz idols like Liza Minnelli and hot young artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat (seen here in “Detail From Contact Sheet [Jean-Michel Basquiat photo shoot for Polaroid portrait; Andy Warhol, Bruno Bischofberger]”) making this era-defining nightclub their second home. Andy Warhol captured a lot of it with his little camera, and Cantor has acquired 3,600 contact sheets and negatives (totaling more than 130,000 shots, 1976-87). Here are Truman Capote, Lou Reed, Annie Leibovitz (looking like a teenager), Halston, all the best Kennedys, Regine’s, “21,” glamorous apartments and star dressing rooms. This exhibition also includes silk-screen paintings inspired by various shots.

Before Georgia O’Keeffe fell in love with the American Southwest, even before her Canyon (Texas) period, she spent five summers (1912-16) at the University of Virginia, first as a 24-year-old student, then as an instructor. And during those summers in Charlottesville (where her mother ran a boardinghouse), she took a decided turn to modernism and abstraction, as seen in these early watercolors of the university’s rotunda and grounds (pictured is “Untitled [West Lawn-University of Virginia]”) and other settings. A summer course here introduced her to the imagination and self-expression ideas of the painter and educator Arthur Wesley Dow, who believed in focusing on line, mass and color, rather than copying nature. She experimented with simplified, refined compositions. “Here you see the beginnings of O’Keeffe’s mature voice,” a Fralin spokeswoman said, “the way she carefully selects form and divides space.” The show includes 26 artworks and college ephemera. This is the first time the watercolors have been seen outside the O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.

This may not be the kind of show you usually associate with African art. There are jazzy eyeglasses made of spoons, cork, wire and other found materials from Cyrus Kabiru, a Kenyan designer (“Caribbean Sun” is pictured). A Dokter and Misses liquor cabinet was inspired by the burglar bars that surround many homes in Southern Africa. Fashion, furniture, graphic design, video games and digital comics are displayed next to sculpture, film and photography. The exhibition brings together the work of more than 120 African artists and designers of today to convey the experimentation and transformation taking place in the 21st century. For contrast, there are midcentury works of African artists responding to their new postcolonial reality. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Vitra Design Museum in Germany are co-organizers.

New Hampshire

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Jeffrey Gibson, "WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHEN DO YOU WANT IT?," 2016CreditJeffrey Gibson, via the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth

The new entrance opens directly onto the Dartmouth Green. There’s a sweeping atrium and a lot more ground-floor gallery space, making additional room for the likes of Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Native American artists and others. In fact, there’s almost twice as much exhibition space as before. The Hood, with its enormous (65,000-plus works) collection, closed in March 2016 for a major renovation and expansion (by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects) and is getting ready for a big January opening, with 16 newly done galleries. Some recent acquisitions that will be on display: Thomas Cole’s “View on Lake George” (1826), Alma Thomas’s “Wind Dancing With Spring Flowers” (1969) and Jeffrey Gibson’s sculpture “What Do You Want? When Do You Want It?” (2016), pictured.